Between
them, Fedex and UPS deliver about twenty million packages a day. If they
operated with 99.5% reliability, each day one hundred thousand packages
would go missing. That does not happen.

If they
operated with 99.95% reliability, each day ten thousand packages would
vanish. Now 99.95% is pretty good, but that doesn’t happen either.
In fact, they function far, far more reliably than that. Regardless of
whether you use Fedex or UPS, and regardless of which office you drop
off your package at, there is virtually a 100% likelihood of it reaching
its destination.

You
don’t need to inquire about the educational background of the clerk
who accepts your package or about the driving record of the employee behind
the wheel of the truck. Fedex or UPS will deliver your package to wherever
you instructed them. They’ve got the package delivery business down
to a science.

Dr.
Atul Gawande, a distinguished physician at the Brigham and Women’s
Hospital in Boston, pointed out that although we like to think of medicine
as purely a science it seems to also behave like an art. Even when doctors
receive the same education and training and have access to the same technologies,
the range of results is considerably greater than is found in, say, the
package delivery business.

This
is because people are not packages and both doctors and patients are people.
There are many jobs and occupations in this world that allow you to choose
to work mostly with packages or other objects rather than people. For
instance, repairing a modern car is largely limited to plugging the car
into manufacturer-supplied diagnostic equipment. A shop owner could make
the adjustments that pop up on the screen or replace the indicated defective
component leaving to an associate all interaction with customers, vendors,
and employees.

It is
far easier to confine oneself to the mechanical than deal with the human.
After all, let us agree that most of the frustration and pain in our professional
lives comes from our interaction with people rather than things. However,
the more interaction with people there is in your professional life, the
more opportunity and potential there is too. Working with people is where
the magic is.

Regardless
of how talented the introverted software designer may be, forcing himself
to also become involved in the outside work of sales and investor meetings
will assure him of a far more rewarding life both psychically and financially.

Many
new lawyers fall into the career trap of becoming emotionally attached
to the logical structure of building a case or the thrill of demolishing
an opponent’s case. These of course are basic tools in the practice
of law but the person who confines himself to wielding the tools has less
leverage than were he also to connect with people.

Whether
your profession is operating machinery, writing software, practicing law
or anything else at all, avoid the temptation of retreating from human
interaction. I believe that even at a certain well-run chain of coffee
shops all associates, including coffee-masters and other specialists,
have to spend some time actually serving customers.

Avoid
becoming detached from the people who are important to your business while
keeping busy with the objects and things of your business.

The
assembly line worker envisaged by Ford can ultimately be replaced by machinery.
This was captured by Henry Ford's quote: "Why is it that I always
get the whole person when what I really want is just a pair of hands?"

It cannot
escape the attention of any reasonably alert reader of the Bible that
God’s Message to humanity largely describes people relating to people.

Subscribe
to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!

Enter
Your E-Mail Address:

There
is not a lot of Scriptural narrative about some lonely man’s struggle
with nature or an artist working on his masterpiece alone for years-themes
often found in meaningless post-modern literature. Even our relationship
with God is completely intertwined with our relationships with people.

To truly
succeed in business and in life, one has to develop, nurture and increase
connection with others. There are marvelous objects in the world, but
none as marvelous as human beings.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, known world-wide
as America's Rabbi, is a noted rabbinic scholar, best-selling author and
host of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin Show on San Francisco’s KSFO. He
is one of America’s most eloquent speakers and his ability to extract
life principles from the Bible and transmit them in an entertaining manner
has brought countless numbers of Jews and Christians closer to their respective
faiths. In 2007 Newsweek magazine included him in its list of America’s
fifty most influential rabbis.

It
is far easier to confine oneself to the mechanical than deal with the
human. After all, let us agree that most of the frustration and pain in
our professional lives comes from our interaction with people rather than
things.